27th May 2015
Glastonbudget 2015
The World’s greatest tribute festival
We were at Glastonbudget this year to see many of the bands, singers and artists who graced the seven stages of music acts that were on offer over the festival weekend of 22nd to 24th May.
Read our reports on Glastonbudget 2015
A full photo gallery of all the pictures our team took at Glastonbudget will be available in a few days.
Photos © RhinoFeroSs Photography and © Music in Leicester, courtesy of Glastonbudget 2015.
For links to Friday, Saturday and Sunday pages scroll down ↓
For those who like tribute acts, this festival is a must. There was a lot more to see than tribute bands.
Glastonbudget, the world’s greatest tribute festival chose to celebrate their tenth year of success, in style over the bank holiday weekend. By taking festival-goers on a musical journey, with performances from sensational tribute acts and independent artists, they pulled off a successful event that was attended by music fans from around the world.
Photo: RhinoFeroSs
Courtesy of Glastonbudget 2015
The one-of-a-kind festival saw artists perform tribute songs from across the 70s, 80s and 90s including Kazabian, Mercury (Freddie from Queen that is), Oasish and Fleetwood Bac all taking to the main stage. Audiences also gathered across the other six other stages to watch sets from over a 100 independent artists including pop band TwoSixOnes, heavy metal group Sour Mash and BBC Introducing’s Esther Turner.
Eighties singing sensation, Toyah Wilcox gave the audience a fantastic performance and had the crowd going wild. Toyah sang a variety of her best hits including the favourite It’s a Mystery along with songs from her most recent album, Has God Ceased to Dream You.
Photo: RhinoFeroSs
Courtesy of Glastonbudget 2015
Since 2006, Glastonbudget has invited a special guest to perform, with previous acts including Chesney Hawkes, Chas and Dave and Neville Staples.
The biggest event in Leicestershire also put on a good event experience, with a wide range of food and drinks stalls. The main sponsors of the festival, Tiger Beer added to the fun by serving their pints from a London double-decker bus.
The Glastonbudget Festival supported local charity, The Leicestershire and Rutland Organisation for the Relief of Suffering (LOROS) and highlighted the importance of donations received, by encouraging people to wear fancy dress and have their faces painted. Glastonbudget was proud to continue their work with LOROS and hope to have raised more money for the charity, in 2015 than any other year.
Glastonbudget encourage upcoming artists from across the area, such as Leicester’s very own acoustic duo Abandon Her, singer Aaron Stratton and BBC’s introducing soft rock group, 5th Pier.
The festival took place between 22nd to 24th May, and saw over a 100 independent artists performing on seven stages. The Nuneaton based, Indie-rock brothers, The Kingcrawlers are back after popular demand since performing at the festival for three consecutive years. Following the release of their debut album, Ride on Cowboy, the boys achieved fame on BBC Introducing in 2013, whilst featuring on radio shows around the UK. The Kingcrawlers are a festival favourite and will no doubt act as a popular feature across the three days.
Further home-grown talent will be provided from Before The Crash returning with their captivating stage presence and female-rock leading vocals from Shezza Wileman. The band’s resemblance to Paramore and energetic sound is inspired by major acts, such as Muse and My Chemical Romance. The Leicestershire rock band’s latest achievements include penning and releasing their original song: Braindead. The Fufu Sailors have been travelling the UK circuit for 10 years, providing fans with a range of genres in performances that specialise in cover songs, 60s soul tunes and 90s medleys. The five piece band affectionately dub fans ‘The Fuffettes’. Amongst the Midlands talent, festival goers will have the chance to experience the performances of major tribute acts such as, Kazabian, Four Fighters, Abba Revival, Oasish, The Darkside of Pink Floyd, Not The Rolling Stones and more. Many fans were clearly pleased to see the return of some of their favourite tributes.
Photo: RhinoFeroSs
Courtesy of Glastonbudget 2015
Another of the many acts returning to year’s festival was Loughborough-based Jonezy, whose appearance last year was one of the highlights of the Icon stage. Leicester top rock trio Skam were on the Big Top stage this year; members of Skam have attended the festival pretty much every year since it started. With over 160 original bands on offer, the festival provided a wide range of musical styles, enough to satisfy the tastes of most music fans. The various stages provide a great way of being the quality of what our local music scene has to offer.
This year’s event was blessed with reasonably good weather – very little rain meant that the pitch was dry and improvements to the drainage meant that there was none of the mud-bath stuff seen in some previous years.
Whilst many of the stages this year were the same as last year, a new addition was the Libra stage, offering a variety of bands and artists.
The presence of original bands and new bands has been a long-standing feature of Glastonbudget. Each year The Shed venue in Leicester has hosted auditions at which bands and artists can present their acts to the festival selectors. MIL magazine attended quite a few of these events to see some of the acts that went on to the perform at the festival.
Another thing we noticed about this year’s event was the wide range of food available on site; alongside traditional foods were various cuisines from around the world, catering for the diversity of tastes of today’s festival-goers. No less diverse, was the range of drinks on offer, real ales sitting alongside the standard products at prices that were competitive compared to many other similar events. We also noticed that some of the stages has bears this year so that fans need not walk some distance but could get a drink without having to leave a performance they were enjoying – a welcome addition we thought.
Glastonbudget is a festival that is family-friendly. We noticed a large number of wagons of all kinds, being pulled along by parents with offspring asleep under the cover of the wagons. It is very much a festival that is good for families with children of all ages.
Photo: RhinoFeroSs
Courtesy of Glastonbudget 2015
Media Team at Glastonbudget 2015: RhinoFeroSs photography (France), Kevin Gaughan, with additional images by Trevor Locke and Jesper Jorgensen (Denmark). All media courtesy of Glastonbudget 2015.
Read our reports on Glastonbudget 2015
Visit the Glastonbudget website
See also:
Our report on Glastonbudget 2014
Our report on Glastonbudget 2013
